I am discovering that it is not necessarily an easy thing to find information directly related to the holiness of God without commentators generally glossing over the part about God’s Holiness and moving immediately to a discussion on our holiness. Yet, as near as I can tell, we CANNOT be holy (as God sees it) until we see how Holy He is, and how unholy we are.
That being said, I have found that Isaiah’s account in Isaiah 6 is one of the most descriptive presentations of a man discovering God’s Holiness, and thus his own unholiness.
It starts, as it should for all of us, with the fact that Isaiah saw the “Lord”- that is, Adonai-”the Lord of all men”. Before we are able to see God as Holy, we first must recognize His Position. He is the Lord of ALL men. Let me be more specific. This means He is the Master and Owner of all men. God, Adonai, the Lord is my Master. He is YOUR Master. He is our Owner. You may not wish to acknowledge Him as such, but that does not change His Position! My children may choose to act as if I do not exist, and do whatever they want, however, that does not change my position as their father, nor does it remove my responsibility to train, guide, and discipline them properly. This is the same with the Lord. It is one thing to call Him Lord, but to completely acknowledge Him as My Master in action and in heart is another.
Secondly in this royal vision, Isaiah sees the Lord AS the Lord in His Power. He is upon His throne, which is a throne that transcends all thrones. Everything about this first verse shows what Isaiah felt when he saw God. He saw the Ultimate Ruler, the Supreme Being. His voice was even so powerful that there seemed to be an earthquake with smoke filling the area. This is pretty impressive, movies still use these visual cues to promote fear and trepidation in the hearts of their viewers. This power is so evident that Isaiah just fell apart. That is the sense behind “Woe is me! for I am undone..” When Isaiah REALLY saw the Lord, he became an emotional/mental/physical mush pile.
Thirdly, Isaiah saw His Presence. We are not given a description of the form of God here, this appears to be a vision that is almost a feeling. He didn’t just dreamily see these things, he felt them. Much detail is given, however, concerning all the things that God’s Presence produced. The shaking, the smoke, the train filling the temple, and then there is another set of angels called the seraphim (these are not the same as the cherubim), who apparently have the ministry of worship, proclaiming the holiness of God. There is another whole blog here about why they cover their feet and face, but basically it is because God is SO holy that they do not feel worthy to reveal their own beauty, or reveal their own path, because God’s holiness is so great.
I am struck by the results of God’s Holiness in Isaiah’s vision. According to this, when a man sees the true Holiness of God, things change. The Lord’s position, power, and presence were clearly evident to Isaiah, they were not just things he talked about, they were things he saw and felt! God’s Holiness affected him so greatly that he no longer felt like there was any place comfortable for him to go. He could not run away from the presence, he could not ignore the presence, he could not continue his own plans in this Presence. The Lord is much the Master, that Isaiah realizes that most of what he has been doing and saying are just piles of dirt. When he saw God for who God really was, then he became painfully aware of how truly dirty he himself was.
This is true worship! It involves both God and me. Then, and not until then, is an angel sent to help him purify his lips for the work which God had called him to do. God’s Holiness had this same affect upon others in the Bible: Saul became Paul (Acts 9), John fell down as dead (Rev 1:17), Moses had a shining face (Exo 34:30), and Job covered himself in dust and ashes and said, “I repent”(Job 42:5-6).
Oh God! Please let me see your holiness like Isaiah saw it! Please give me some sense of your greatness, and thus my own smallness. I need to be nothing, and you need to be everything.